


Of Noisy Silence and Silent Noise

by BrainlessGenius



Series: Private moments and Intrusive thoughts [1]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Cannibalistic Thoughts, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders Angst, Disturbing Themes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, One Shot, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Sexual thoughts, Suicidal Thoughts, Violent Thoughts, but fleeting ones, self-deprecating thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26715208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrainlessGenius/pseuds/BrainlessGenius
Summary: Even the embodiment of intrusive thoughts isn’t immune to them, and sometimes the silence and the noise are all too much for Remus.A fill for the prompt: Intrulogical hurt/comfort
Relationships: Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders
Series: Private moments and Intrusive thoughts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2016952
Comments: 5
Kudos: 148





	Of Noisy Silence and Silent Noise

“Ooooor maybe we can shake things up a little and  _ not  _ censor the next episode.”

Thomas and the other sides guided their attention towards the grinning, green-clad creative side hanging from the ceiling, their brows raising and sighs escaping their lips as they took in the duke’s suggestion.

“Remus, as much as that sounds like a hell of a lot more fun, we do have younger audience members and uh, I don’t want to get demonetized.” Thomas said, neck stretching up to let his eyes meet with Remus’s above him.

“Shame.” The grin was wiped off his face and Remus let his body drop down to the carpeted floor of the living room back first with a loud thud. Everyone made room as he picked himself up immediately and glanced at his nails with furrowed brows. “ _ #LetRemusSayFuck  _ has been trending on Tumblr for days now. Just saying, Tommy, you’ll be letting people down.”

“I—really? It is? But, yeah, no. We still can’t, Remus. Sorry, bud.”

With a disappointed pout, Remus allowed himself to plop down on a conveniently empty spot on the couch right beside Logan, who spared him a glance to acknowledge Remus’s presence. “Oh well. There’s always a next time. You can’t pin my mouth down forever, Tomathy.”

The discussion of possible video ideas resumed almost instantly, with the steady hum of voices fusing into the back of Remus’s mind like a soft, gentle lull. They’d been doing this a lot now; especially ever since he and Janus finally got a seat on the table, a place in this little sextet of misfits.

And  _ oh,  _ it felt wonderful being out here with them like this. He looked back on the long, long years of trudging through the thick, murky, soot that seemed to follow him around back in the dark mindscape; the low, crooked ceilings that always had some disgusting, anonymous concoction dripping from its cracks; and the loud, mocking echoes bouncing off the walls whose voice almost always belonged to one of the “lights,” and later on, even Virgil.

Remus involuntarily shivered as he reminisced about those sights, but those chilling memoirs were only secondary. It was still home, after all; and it wasn’t like he didn’t learn to love the bastardly place. The worst thing about their old place was never really the dimness of the hallway, or the sludge on the walls, or even the creaking of the rickety furniture.

It was the silence.

He couldn’t really blame the other two for being so fucking silent all the damned time. Janus’s kink was his privacy and Virgil was an anxious little shit; so there were more moments of passiveness than activity, really, while he was with them.

Well, the silence had its perks. It meant he could get up to all the crazy, wild, juicy, and horrific escapades and claim not just part of the imagination, but even part of the mindscape as his. Thomas or Roman would never have heard out his ideas anyway. It meant he was free, too; free to conjure up urine fountains, erotic murals, blood-sucking capybaras, and exploding chicks whose guts shot up into the air like tiny, red and pink firework displays.

But silence also meant noise; but not the kind that all the sides heard every New Year and Fourth of July. This noise was one only for Remus’s ears, originating from nowhere else but the recesses of his ever-active mind. This noise creeped up on him on the most silent nights when everyone else was asleep, yet his mind was still running, painfully awake. This noise resembled a thief, Remus thought. It attacked when he least expected it, stealing all of the blissful silence in his head and replacing them with more sinister, louder decoys. Yet, it was also a choir-- a choir missing a conductor with every person holding sheet music to an entirely different song, all the altos, sopranos, basses, and tenors shouting at the top of their lungs at varying tempos, pitches, and volume.

No one ever said that being the embodiment of intrusive thoughts meant he was immune to them.

Here, in the “lights’” mindscape, silence was  _ rare.  _ There was always an unknown voice, the clinging of utensils, a hearty laugh, a squeak of furniture, crashes of doors, hints of conversation, groans of exasperation, or clashing of weapons. There was always  _ something;  _ but of course, even the liveliest of places had its dead moments, and Remus was always ready to welcome the onslaught of choirs and thieves in the idleness of the night.

It’s always been that way. He’d find silence in the noise and noise in the silence. Which is why Remus found it surprising that the usual demonic chorale of voices decided to shake things up a bit and push the steady stream of suggestions coming from his fellow sides  _ lightning quick  _ into the back of his mind. He didn’t understand why now when it was anything but silent; why when he’s in the company of the others; why now when he still had to prove that he  _ earned  _ this seat, this role, this… acceptance? It was almost nauseating how quick the sharp claws of the inky thoughts claimed his consciousness; snagging any word that he could’ve said back down his throat, the bitterness staining his pipes.

_ Taxidermy sounds like a good idea for a video. _

He desperately tried to tune out the thoughts and latch onto any vocal wave coming from the others, but he found himself lost in a sea of inside and outside voices.

_ Dig up a body and shove it in a trunk. Thomas’s grandfather should do perfectly. _

“Remus, you haven’t said anything in a while. You okay there?” Who said that? He blinked once, then found Thomas staring at him with the same expression he wore whenever he was concerned for someone. Someone like a partner, while Thomas lay under him, disheveled and high in pleasure but still buzzing with worry while he was being filled with— _ Remus, for fuck’s sake, timing! _

“Oh, yeah. Just cooking up a delicious episode in my head involving kangaroos, nudity, and buckets and buckets of shit. Better than what Roman was saying, anyway.”

“Hey!”

They took the lie well. It wasn’t hard. All it took were the first (filtered) words that came into his mind, a few exaggerated gestures, large eyes, and a wide, annoying grin. Janus looked at him funny for the slightest moment before a comment from Patton stole his attention right back.

_ The next steps are terribly easy. You’d need a long, sharp knife, then ssssslice open his torso and spill out his guts. That’ll take care of dinner too… _

He sucked a quick, deep breath in before the thought spiraled down even more. Dear fuck, he could handle wild shit like this but not _ now.  _ He couldn’t afford to drown in them just yet. He needed a distraction. He needed… he needed noise. That’s how it’s always worked before, hasn’t it?

“Thomas! Why don’t you teach the audience a little lesson in anatomy, huh? Didn’t you say you wanted your content to be  _ educational _ ?” Remus said that a little too fast for his taste but no one seemed to pay it any mind.

“Do share, Remus. I am… intrigued by your suggestion.” The comment came from beside him. From Logan, who had the smallest, most precious hint of a smile from the mere mention of a single branch of Science.

_ Bash his teeth in. Wipe that pretty smile off his face. Paint his pearly whites with a deep, crimson red. _

He couldn’t stop the wince that grazed his features or the single, uncut nail that dug into his palm a little too deeply. He could only hope Logan was a bit more oblivious than he passed off to be.

“Oh, simple, Thomas. All you’d need to do is to grab a few friends to strip  _ buck naked  _ with you in front of the camera and interactively point out every bit and piece with the accuracy of an arrow hitting you dab  _ smack _ in the asshole.” The words were out before he could stop his mouth, and he could only watch in horror as Virgil’s eye twitched, Patton’s complexion paled, Janus’s gaze narrowed, Roman’s mouth gaped, Thomas’s brows furrowed, and Logan… he couldn’t even bear to look at Logan.

_ That’ll do it. You’re revolting, Remus. You’re just as horrendous as your thoughts. _

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do this. Not to them.

_ Don’t you just hate the looks on their faces? Don’t you just want to carve their eyes out and split open their tongues? _

He needed to get out of there.

_ Hitting Roman wasn’t enough. We can get more creative! We can crank out the iron bull and trap him inside and toss it into the mouth of an active volcano! _

He got up, narrowly catching himself as he stood on wobbling legs, doing his best not to show the gritting of his teeth and the heaving of his chest.

“Well, it looks like I just gave you the idea of a lifetime, Tommy! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some other quirkier business to attend to. See ya, hoes!” That seemed convincing enough. He didn’t mean to glance beside him before he sunk down. Really, he didn’t. But the unreadable expression on Logan’s face, one that Remus would rather not decipher, gave him all the more reason to make his quick escape. He could’ve sworn that he heard someone calling out his name, but that was ridiculous. No one would come after him. It was probably best that he left, anyway.

_ Aw, you’re all alone now; but alone is much more fun, isn’t it? _

In his room, Remus practically sprinted to get to his bed, to any taste of comfort it could offer. He allowed his loud breaths to fill the room as he sat by the edge, fingers twisting in the messy sheets below him.

_ You’ve never actually used the morning star on yourself. Wonder what that would feel like on your skull? _

His hands shot up to press firmly on his ears, his fingers knotted into his hair, and his nails dug into his scalp.

_ Just a little deeper and you’d be able to peel your skin right off your scalp like a long, ripe banana. _

His eyes tightly shut close and a pained groan pushed its way past his clenched teeth. He felt a quick gust of wind just in front of him, but he was too petrified and occupied to open his eyes and check what it could possibly be. For all he knew it could have just been one of his creatures coming to haunt him again. Might as well.

_ Splendid idea, having your creatures gobble you up ‘till you’re nothing but a pile of bones. _

The groan turned into a short, exhausted scream as the noise continued to envelope his head and clog up his ears ‘till it was the only thing Remus could hear. Every disturbing, ominous, sexual, creepy, and threatening sentence that bled out of his mind felt like another dagger slicing through the back of his eye sockets; and suddenly Remus was terrified. He hated feeling terrified.

“—mus!”

_ How would it feel like to watch every one of them die at your hands? _

There was a warm sensation wrapping his hands, but that shouldn’t be because Remus was nothing but warm. Remus was the biting cold that froze off your tits ‘till your nips turned blue and it fell right off your chest; and no one could possibly want that. No one could love that. Not even if it had a brother.

_ How would it feel to see yourself die at your very own hands— _

**_“Remus!”_ **

Wait. That was new. That was a new voice; but it rang out louder in his head than the previous noise ever did, and he held onto it like a fish pierced on a steel-sharp hook _._

“Remus open your eyes please. Look at me.”

He could hear him clearly now, and the manic symphony was now farther back than this new voice was. The voice told him to open his eyes, and he did.

His glassy green eyes met Logan’s shining blue ones, and in Remus’s mind he thought the moldy color of his irises shouldn’t have any business mixing with the oceanic beauty that is Logan’s eyes, but he found himself drowning in it anyway. He’s never seen so much worry and concern on the usually stoic side’s face, and in that moment, Remus would’ve given anything to rid of the lines decorating Logan’s forehead.

Before he knew it, his hands were being gently dislodged from his scalp, leaving a slight sting from where his nails picked and scratched.

“There we are.” Logan still had a warm, slightly calloused hand over his own clammy ones-- slight contact Remus was infinitely grateful for. “Salutations, Remus. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get to work on tending to your minor injuries, if I have your permission?” Remus’s head was still too fuzzy to say anything, and so he settled for a few nods. As Logan gingerly worked on cleaning up his hands and running a cloth through Remus’s sweat and dried blood-soaked hair, the pair slipped into an easy, tranquil silence; one that made Remus shiver slightly with dread at the thought of the hampered noises loudening once again.

He watched Logan meticulously hunt for every small wound on the top of his head, the other’s tie brushing against Remus’s nose as he did. Remus took notice of the deadly silence and tapped his foot anxiously as he waited for the dreaded blare to take over again, but nothing came.

It was just him, Logan, and silence. Nothing more, nothing less.

The kit had been put away now, and the cloth had been rinsed and set up to dry in one of the towel racks. Logan was never one for displays of emotion, affection, or even concern, so it didn’t surprise Remus that upon his return, not a single word was uttered. Logan simply cleared his throat, pushed up his glasses, and sat down beside Remus on his mess of a bed, in total, complete silence. Then again, even silence had a breaking point.

“Are you… are you feeling any better, Remus?”

Logan’s voice was calming in ways Remus didn’t understand at all. It was the only noise he deemed welcome in his rattled state of mind.

“I mean my head still feels like a puddle of booger-flavored goo, but yeah it’s better than a while ago.”

The tiny smile was back again, and Remus couldn’t remember the last time any side smiled at him with the same genuineness Logan’s held.

“That is great to hear.” He watched as Logan quickly diverted his gaze from him; and for a while, Remus thought he had said something that blew it. That this was it, Logan’s job was done and he had no more reason to be here with someone like  _ Remus  _ and he was about to be left alone with his scary,  _ scary  _ thoughts again—

“Would you prefer it if I kept you company for the night?”

Oh.  _ Oh. _

Did he actually hear that right? Logan? Asking if he could possibly stay with Remus? Had he actually, finally gone insane? He must’ve been staring at Logan without a reply for too long ‘cause Logan began to scratch at his head and was about to apologize, but Remus wasn’t having any of that.

“Yeah, specs. I think I’d like that. Just keep your hands above the belt and I think you’re good to stay rent-free.” Remus dotted the light-hearted with a wink for good measure and chortled at the slight blush that crept up on Logan’s face.

Hours later, with the pair in their respective onesies leaning side by side sat up against the headboard, Remus playing with clay with his head on Logan’s soft shoulder while the latter quietly read his favorite novel, there was nothing but silence between them.

And for once, there was no noise that followed.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you're all doing okay! Every little support and kudos is eternally appreciated. Follow me on Tumblr [@nerdy-emo-royal-dad](https://nerdy-emo-royal-dad.tumblr.com/)!. Stay safe, fams! <3


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